There appear to be two teams in Washington playing under the banners
of elephants and donkeys. They have different platforms, use different
rhetoric, call each other bad names, and (in the case of the elephants)
filibuster bills and impeach and prosecute abuses and crimes by the
other side. One team wants to provide us with more healthcare, maybe,
sort of, and the other does not. One side is hesitant about or even
resistant to demonizing or discriminating against foreigners and
immigrants and gays and racial minorities, and the other is not. One
side wants to protect the right to unionize, maybe, sort of, and the
other does not.

But both teams favor Wall Street bailouts, corporate trade
agreements, an ever larger military, corporate contributions,
bi-partisan gerrymandering, an ever greater presence of military bases
abroad, restrictions on ballot access, the continuation and escalation
of illegal wars, and extension of the powers to spy without warrants,
detain without charges, rendition, torture (yes, torture),
make laws by signing-statement or executive order or secret memo, and
-- of course -- the assurance of immunity for high officials' war
crimes.

President Obama is called a liar and a socialist and a foreigner by
the other side, but his Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail,
making absolutely unprecedented claims of secrecy, to protect the
crimes of Bush and Cheney. Obama is appealing and re-appealing rulings
that could mean exposure or accountability for torturers and
warrantless spyers or for a former vice president who leaked the name
of an undercover agent. Obama's White House has threatened to cut off
intelligence sharing with Britain and declared phone companies to be
part of the government. All to protect the shouters of "liar!" and
"Muslim!"

Back in November, Steve Clemons reported a story
that the corporate media studiously ignored. I don't have any second
source for it, but I suspect it's true and have some theories about
additional details. This was Clemons' report:

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"A senior Obama campaign official shared with The
Washington Note that in July 2008, the McCain and Obama camps began to
work secretly behind the scenes to assemble large rosters of potential
personnel for the administration that only one of the candidates would
lead. Lists comprised of Democrats and Republicans were assembled,
sorted into areas of policy expertise, so that the roster could be
called on after the election by either the Obama or McCain transition
teams. This kind of out-of-sight coordination is rare between battling
presidential camps and provides some indication that both Obama and
McCain intended to draw expertise into their governments from both
sides of the aisle -- or at least they wanted to appear interested in
doing so if the information leaked out about the list development
process."

Now, Washington (and the Pentagon and CIA, DIA and NSA, and various
other agencies spread around the greater DC metropolitan area) is home
to a large permanent government of bureaucrats who work for elephants
and donkeys alike. Eric Holder could have become attorney general under
a president of either flavor. Robert Gates was in charge of the
Pentagon before and after Bush left town. From the highest to the
lowest of positions, there are people who just never leave. Or, if they
leave, they go to work for lobbying firms and large government
contractors for a while, before returning to what we euphemistically
call public service. And many of the lobbying firms are bipartisan, or
they mutate from one partisan leaning to the other with the shifts in
government power. If a lobbying firm arranged for the joint appointees
list development, it would have just been hedging its bets. I offer the
following more as an example than as a discovery of the one true secret
seat of permanent power or any thing of the sort. But here's my theory.
I encourage reporters (remember those?) to look into it.

Ogilvy Government Relations (formerly known as the Federalist Group) is a lobbying firm in Washington that employs
nine Republicans and nine rightward tilting Democrats, including some
top officials in the McCain and Obama campaigns. The Democrats include:

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Matthew Nugen. He was Obama for America National Political Director
and a courter of super delegates for Obama. He was in charge of the
2008 Democratic National Convention. He had previously been Deputy
Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and
Director of the Office of the Chairman (Howard Dean). Prior to that, he
was Deputy Political Director/Director of Delegate Operations for
Senator Joe Lieberman's Presidential campaign (Now there's a name that
embodies the merger of the two political animals!).

Moses Mercado. He also worked for Obama and Dean, and other top Democrats.

Andrew M. Rosenberg. He was a co-founder and Senior Advisor to Draft
Obama and a consultant to the Democratic National Committee. "Mr.
Rosenberg," his bio brags, "is an occasional political commentator on
Fox News Channel."

Joe Lapia. He worked for the U.S. Senate's Democratic cloakroom
including under Majority Leader Harry Reid, and previously interned for
Senator Joe Biden.

Dean Aguillen. He was a senior advisor and Director of Member Services in the Office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Republicans include:

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John Green. He was Director of Congressional Affairs for Senator John McCain during the 2008 Presidential Campaign.

Wayne Berman. He was, according to his Ogilvy bio, "a senior advisor
to the Bush/Cheney transition in 2001, the vice presidential campaign
director for Dole/Kemp and deputy director of the Republican National
Convention in 1996, director of congressional relations during the
Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988 and a deputy director of the Bush/Reagan
transition team in 1981. He has served in a variety of fundraising
capacities in every Republican presidential race since 1992." That
would include the McCain campaign, for which he was national finance
co-chairman, despite not admitted to it in his bio. McCain earned some
bad press for employing lobbyists, including Berman, who was openly
also employed by Ogilvy at the time.

David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online (more...)